


Kingside Castle

by patchworkgirl



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Canon Compliant, Everything Hurts, Gen, M/M, Power Imbalance, Pre-Canon, Scheming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-14 05:09:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9163600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchworkgirl/pseuds/patchworkgirl
Summary: Galen has a galaxy to save, and one pilot's chance at a happy ending can't be allowed to figure into his calculations. Bodhi has cargo to fly around, and it's nice to be appreciated a little.





	1. Chapter 1

Once a pilot had the hang of a tricky route, they were stuck on it. Most routes were tricky because of the hyperspace lanes, but the route between Eadu and Jedha wasn't really interesting. It was managing the thin, uncooperative atmosphere above a cold desert moon on one end and the gravity well of a storm wracked nightmare of karst and scabland on the other that gave the vacuum jockeys fits. But if you were already used to Jedha, if the vagaries of its winds didn't give you any trouble, if the cold and dry and the rapid leaps from dark to light felt like the natural order, that halved the trouble. 

It wasn't so bad. Sure, the route was so busy and understaffed that his days off kept being cut, but it wasn't like he'd stop in a cantina at home with an Imperial insignia on his shoulder, and he was barely suffered in the research facility's mess hall. He hadn't seen much of his friends, but sometimes a little time alone was soothing. If he had to talk to people, he wanted it to be about the taste of pilot rations and the latest engine modifications and tricks for keeping steady on the dark side of a moon, where the heat from the light side kept the wind whipping and swirling every moment. But even that was so tiring sometimes. Yes, this was a fine assignment. Didn't bother him at all.

Except the kyber crystals.

He wasn't so focused on the slow, relentless looting of his home and the heart of the galaxy itself. That went in the same little box as the buzz of an occupied city, memories of his conscription day, whispers of civilian round-ups and raids on “rebels” whose crimes seemed to be sitting on mineral resources the Imperials wanted. Things no one could change, especially not a cargo hauler whose job could be done just as well by a droid, who hadn't even been able to pass into fighter training. No point.

No, it was the way they... demanded attention. Some of the hauls were mostly documents, artifacts, equipment for the scientists on Eadu, but there were always at least a few fragments of kyber. He knew where they were despite himself, even if he hadn't personally overseen loading, even if the shipping manifest denied their presence. They made him feel like his teeth were vibrating at a frequency that came from ninety degrees left of reality. Or that was the way he'd tipsily described it to a friend who had later done him the very great favor of not remembering. 

Some of the old people back home would talk with the fierce pride of deliberate defiance if you caught them at the right time. They'd tell you that the Jedi could wander through any given street any day and find a new baby with potential, that force sensitivity sprang from the ground, the crystals, the temple, it depended on who you asked in a city with so many faiths and factions. 

Or they had ten years ago. They wouldn't talk to him now, if they were still there, even if they recognized one of the kids swept up in service to one of those recruitment quotas that always seemed to land in NiJedha's territory.

Another thought for that little box.

Eadu wasn't bad today, he thought brightly, because loud, bright ideas kept the box neatly shut, made it easier to ignore the crystals. The weather was just weather, not a death sentence clawing its way through the fragile little shell that kept him alive. As an incidental bonus, of course. It kept the kyber and reference materials intact first and foremost, and his training was all directed quietly toward maintaining the hold's integrity, then the pilot's.

The box was busy today. He caught himself humming and decided, on reflection, that he could hum if he wanted to. No one to pester, no one to question the flow of Imperial melodies into cantina classics into the droning chants of dying faiths. No one to point out that he was just about tone deaf, either. He tapped his fingertips together around the controls in repeating rhythms that echoed the music and forced himself to be content and vacant in time to touch down. Whereupon he immediately stopped himself twitching and rose to hand over his manifest.

Galen Erso had gone for a walk. His entire staff thought he was insane, but that was fairly ordinary, and an important part of the facade he maintained at that. Eccentric, wound up in the work for its own sake, detached after so much loss and unwilling to have much to do with ordinary life. Besides, the rain was only a downpour, not a dangerous torrent, and the base was built according to standard design, which did always include a number of intertwining walkways. He was fairly certain it was so everyone whose uniform entitled them to a cape got to enjoy it sweeping behind them as they purposefully strode about. He'd considered wearing his own on occasion for just that reason. In the better moments, the ones where he could hear Lyra's voice or Jyn's laugh and not want to let himself shatter. They'd all have laughed.

He pushed the thought away gently. He might come back to it if the day went on so gently. There was an issue with scaling the targeting systems without sacrificing fine focus that he could so easily fall into, explore as a pure engineering puzzle, find an elegant solution. And with his trap so carefully laid, he could do it. Could give himself the gift of an afternoon of contemplation and memories, and come back to the problem of how to relay his message tomorrow. 

He had almost resolved on it when a commotion at the landing platform caught his attention. An argument between the logistics officer and his own deputy head of research. Their head of supply, while technically military, was a lifelong bureaucrat, and she'd not only bite the head off a challenger but spend days burying everything in red tape if she felt herself slighted. But he could only assume there was a reason to pick such a fight, and he would save himself unnecessary headaches and dangerous complications if he headed it off. He took a moment to mourn his quiet walk in the rain and made his way over, splashing deliberately to warn them rank was bearing down.

“Director, can you please inform your subordinate that this shipment includes extremely necessary power sources and long awaited parts that allow us to continue to not be dead while we enjoy our time on this miserable rock?”

“My team has been waiting weeks for a kyber shipment that meets our specifications. I need one crate out of the whole blasted lot, or she can explain to Krennic why we're projecting the third shot in any twelve hour period will suffuse a target planet with a pleasantly sunny glow instead of punching through the crust!”

While they worked out their frustration (“I'm not having my crew climb past you while you root though an entire month's supply drop-off!”), Galen's attention fell on the pilot. He'd seen the man before, even exchanged a few words in passing in the mess, but not really looked at him. The movement that caught his eye was a bit of a start at the words punching through the crust. Foolish to blurt out, but it was so easy not to see minor functionaries like the cargo haulers. Lucky Orson wasn't here. The kid would be as good as disappeared, even if he were as practiced as most of his compatriots at forgetting things. 

He made a rather pathetic little figure. The officer had a trooper holding an umbrella over her head and his deputy was staying under the tarp, but the pilot (Rook, come to think) seemed to have come out without so much as a poncho. The father in Galen wanted to wrap him up in something warm. The scheming traitor wanted to see if he could be assigned another route without garnering attention; if a life could be saved by a little caution, he wasn't so far gone as to let it be. But only if it didn't imperil anything important.

Galen looked back to his bickering subordinates (they often forgot that the distant, quiet Erso was in charge of the whole base, in theory) and was about to suggest some mild compromise when the pilot caught his attention yet again. He seemed to be trying to say something, opening his mouth and making small, polite gestures that were aborted again and again as the two shouted past him. He kept trying, like he'd seen this work once and he was sure there was a trick to it. Hiding something approaching amusement, Galen turned to him and raised an eyebrow.

The pilot smiled with an openness that didn't seem to belong in a secret weapon facility on the Outer Rim, puppyishly grateful to be acknowledged. “The crate he wants is right here,” he said quickly, spinning and not quite falling when he immediately slipped in a grimy puddle. He recovered so quickly and seemed so completely unperturbed that that sort of thing probably happened a lot. He took two long strides into the back of the cargo hold, pulled a long, featureless box from the middle of a stack, and had it in Galen's hands a few seconds later.

Galen stared for a moment. The fact was, no kyber crystals were sent from an unstable, occupied world to a sensitive facility without the most paranoid security the Empire could dream of. One standard procedure was decoys. There would be six or eight boxes onboard that all answered this description, and only an innocuous and distinctly blurry serial number on the corner of a label indicated which was a real piece. No one but top researchers knew the code existed. Whoever loaded the ship didn't, certainly. 

And Rook had gone right to them. Yes, he'd have to get this one far away from the project, and Jedha, too. The Imperials weren't kind to the force sensitive, even those who probably didn't know it themselves. Especially, maybe. 

He recovered himself quickly. Long practice. He'd become a good liar. With the slightest look of irritation, he set the box firmly in his deputy's hands, cutting off the argument at the knees before it boiled over into every frustration two strong and incompatible personalities had acquired over long years in close quarters. Feeling it was more or less in character to ignore them now, he did allow himself to turn to the pilot. “Thank you.” 

Jyn would be about his age, if she were any age at all anymore. He shouldn't have thought about her earlier. He didn't think she'd look so deliriously pleased at the mere prospect of being helpful, though, not his Stardust. “It was no problem. I mean, they—they never ask the pilot. With all due respect.” The last words came out clearer but a little confused, like he wasn't sure they belonged there. 

“I think that was all the respect that was due.” Rook snorted and immediately tried to look serious. He should cut this short now. Later, try and find an inconspicuous way to banish the pilot to a run that just handled bantha jerky. The warmth that wanted to sneak into his voice was dangerous. This deep, this close, he couldn't go getting attached to people, to potential sacrifices. Not that he remembered how attachment worked, not really. “Find somewhere to get dry before you drip all over the mess hall.”

“Why, everyone else will be.” He looked a bit shocked at his own daring. Joking with the director. Blast it, it was nice to feel this human for a moment. “Eadu's always wet, Jedha's always cold,” he added.

“Surely you're not on the ground long on Jedha.” He was, he told himself, honestly curious. Grounding a pilot for a moment longer than necessary in a strategically important war zone would be foolish even with an infantry detail, and he didn't think they had troopers to spare.

“I was born on Jedha. I'm... I'm always cold. It wouldn't feel right, otherwise.” 

Bit of a babbler. Didn't matter. Galen missed the next few sentences as his mind tipped from cautious and quiet to the kind of overdrive that had given the galaxy an unfathomable force of death and destruction and plotted its downfall. A local pilot. A young one (young enough to have been a playmate for Stardust in a gentler world) with a real smile who responded to horror with horror, however quickly stifled. 

Not an inconvenience, not a loose end to tie off before anyone went ahead and cut it. A tool. 

Using that tool would make him every bit as cruel as Krennic, would take that last piece of himself that felt uncorrupted and dash it on the sodden ground. Not using it might well seal the Empire's final victory. “Well, if you're resigned to life as a drowned keon, I wouldn't mind a cup of caff myself.” He turned toward the door, watching the pilot scramble up beside him.


	2. Chapter 2

Bodhi had no idea why his little effort to be accommodating deserved so much attention. The director was a busy, important man. A man with the kind of job a child who dreamed in numbers and patterns and peeked under all the rocks should only really admire from a distance. Usually. Apparently all you had to do was help him keep his staff from arguing. Bodhi would have been very grateful himself, but he doubted Galen Erso got edgy whenever people fought around him. 

Common sense said not to question good fortune and to just enjoy the mess hall. No one would glare at him if he came in with the director. Maybe? He was still sort of generally grubby from the flight and wetter than most of the population. Not much wetter, though. Everything leaked. They must have had to reapply sealant daily in the labs. 

“Did you live on Jedha long?” The question snapped him back from planning how to protect the equipment from mildew (he moved through tangents at hyperspeed), and he puzzled over what kind of polite expression you should use when someone who massively outranked you mades pleasant conversational overtures. This kind of thing just didn't happen to him. He really only talked to other pilots and a few gambling buddies. 

The pause went on too long. “Yes. Until I was fifteen.” No need to explain further, or call attention to it. 

“Conscript?” Nobody told the director as much.

His jaw set a little. “I volunteered.”Everyone volunteered. It'd be unseemly otherwise. And, in his case, it was technically true, in that his sister had been a possibility too. But she was older, more established at her market stall, better at bringing in money for the family, and someone had to go. And this way he'd get to fly. The theory had been sound. 

“Volunteered to run cargo?” 

The question was perfectly mild, but Bodhi suppressed a wince anyway. “I... didn't have the scores for the fighter track.” He was still faintly ashamed, even years later. 

Something genuine flashed beyond the studied mask. Probably. Bodhi had enough trouble with people he knew, people he understood. But he knew what putting on a public face looked like. But all Galen said was, “You fly on Eadu.”

“Wind and rocks aren't trying to kill you. If they do it's just physics, and, well, physics is just math.” As a technical pilot, he had no doubt in his own skills, but a few humiliating simulations (just simulations!) had made it very clear that he couldn't handle the combat element. He had no trouble passing trick courses, learning repairs, maneuvering in hyperspace, but he was fundamentally not a soldier. “Besides, the important combat is in the black, not the blue. Atmospheric goop doesn't count for much in examinations.” It was becoming easier to just talk to Galen. The man wasn't tripping him up with questions or projecting the general air of boredom and contempt Bodhi had come to expect from superiors.

“By that logic chemistry is just physics. And biology is just chemistry.” Galen actually seemed to be smiling a little. “Why did I bother to learn more than one science?”

“Well, it is, though,” Bodhi protested weakly. Everything broke down to numbers and patterns. You just didn't always have the maths. That didn't make him wrong, just meant he didn't know everything. Formulas became laws became matter became life and so on until you reached the Force, though of course he wouldn't say that here. 

“I still have questions. Where does the Force fit into your hierarchy? Or geosciences?” Galen looked at him archly, meeting Bodhi's gape, and opened the door to the mess hall, forestalling any attempt to make sense of that. How did a man so free with his thoughts land in such a position? Maybe he was really that brilliant, maybe that was why this outpost was so remote and inhospitable, to keep common ears away from careless words? 

Bodhi found his voice as he followed Galen into line, the words coming slow and deliberate. “Geoscience is chemistry and physics.”

“I see. It's something I'm particular about. My wife was in geosciences.” A cloud passed over the man's face, the kind of cloud anyone touched by the empire could see. “She always objected when the discipline was left out.”

“Chemistry and physics,” Bodhi repeated more quietly. He wanted to ask about the picky scientist who'd been a match for the director, but he, unlike Galen, knew what was safe to say. There was a chance she'd died in some innocuous way, of course, but not a large one. “It's a flower on the end of that branch.” He couldn't ask, but he could acknowledge.

Galen hadn't really looked at him until that moment, he was sure. He was suddenly drowning in deep, warm hazel, couldn't shake the thought that he was looking into the depths of the mind that was worth a whole research station The beginning of the theory that Galen was, however brilliant, a bit frivolous and oblivious fell away. He'd rarely felt so pinned down and exposed, and he'd had his fingers threatened over gambling debts on two separate occasions. 

Another too-long pause, but not from Bodhi this time. “She would have liked that.”

The pilot had no answer for that. He was glad for the distraction of serving droids and the smell of, well, cooked food. It wasn't quite real food, not on a world that ran on cargo deliveries, but apparently engineering crews and officers weren't expected to get all their nutrition from dehydrated rectangles. Heat and prefabricated spice mixes were ambrosia after too long in the lanes. 

Once he had his meal, though, he realized he'd pay for the distraction. He had no idea if he was expected to keep following Galen or not. Usually when they let him in here he found a corner near the troop's tables and carefully avoided the more comfortable, halfway private spots where important people sat. He took two uncertain steps toward his usual spot and looked over his shoulder to find Galen still watching him. After a moment he just nodded, though, and took his cup to one of the officer's nooks. Bodhi relaxed visibly and hurried to the corner table, wanting the protection of a few walls at his back. 

Galen watched him go, not turning his head and letting his eyes follow subtly. He'd pushed too hard, let too much show. Lying, it seemed, was not really the same thing as gaining trust, much as the skills appeared to overlap. He thought he might have been doing alright until he brought Lyra into it. That had been a calculated risk, but he hadn't been prepared for gentle compassion, of all things. Commiseration, curiosity, he could have handled that. But Rook had seemed so sincerely sorry, so careful of his feelings. He must be worse than he thought, more far gone, for a passing moment of kindness to strike him like lightening. 

He'd made a misstep or two. He'd find a way to recover. That was all. Galen brought his focus back where it belonged. The pilot moved like he and planetside gravity just couldn't agree, always on the edge of a moment of catastrophic clumsiness. He sat alone once he found a place and ate with his gaze resting in a middle distance pointed nowhere at all. The easy calm might just be a cargo pilot's coping mechanism, but he was still pretty clearly much happier alone with his dinner. 

Not that Galen had had the impression that the young man disliked him. He'd even held his own end of the conversation, his oddness of a kind that a research director was pretty used to dealing with. He was willing to bet that mind was being wasted on repetitive runs and rudimentary calculations and repairs, but there was nothing he could do about that.

What he could do, what he had to do, was reassess a little. He'd hoped he might find a barely suppressed firebrand in Rook. A foolish hope, he now saw. Even after his own attempt to defect, after Lyra's wasted death and Krennic's attempts to reign him in with hostages and mind games, Galen lived the life of an important imperial asset. It could be easy to forget that, forget that things could be much harder, that not daring to step out of line might be the difference between life and death for an unremarkable conscript from a troublesome little moon. 

He hadn't been wrong, he was still sure. But whatever Rook really thought about the Empire and his place in it, the kid was too careful. He'd chosen to live, and no one could fault him, but it wasn't what Galen needed. The more he thought about it, the more vital it clearly was to have the cooperation of a Jedha-born Imperial with a way off Eadu.

Would there be a way to make inquiries about the pilot without attracting attention? If he seemed personally invested, he'd turn a contact into a hostage. Now all the years of careful isolation seemed miscalculated. He should have cultivated passing acquaintances, crafted himself a smokescreen. He could adopt the pose of a ranking officer abusing a few privileges that were abused more often than not. The pilot was nice enough to look at, and the selection on Eadu was hardly extensive. If it weren't for Orson he might have resolved on that, but the man knew him too well to believe Galen Erso would forsake nearly twenty years of mournful loneliness for a doe eyed stranger his daughter's age. 

There had to be a way. And he didn't doubt he'd think of it. He'd been soaking up sensitive information for years. But, Galen admitted to himself, he'd need to be sure of his goal before he took the risk. Was he only thinking of insight, of the ways a past might illuminate a possible future, or was he willing to use what he found as leverage? Concoct a convincing lie about a training exercise or a covert mission, lean on blackmail if the pilot balked. He wanted to appeal to Rook's better self, but he'd left his own better self behind long ago. The whole plan hinged on the conviction that one life, even many lives, could not be valued above the fate of the whole galaxy.

He didn't doubt the kid was kind and good. Everything pointed to an unusual capacity for sweetness. To choose a word entirely at random and not dwell on it. But the world was full of good people who let bad things happen, who intended nobody any harm and acted in the best interests of their loved ones but ultimately chose to look the other way. 

He'd have to find a way to get to Rook. It would be nice if that way were rooted in character and courage. It would not be necessary.


	3. Chapter 3

Galen set off that afternoon for the Logistics Officer. He would have made the visit anyway. He could give himself a certain amount of credit in that one respect; he had always been an active manager of the Eadu complex. Research could not continue without the base running smoothly, and there were politics to play even here. He even honestly felt he ought to do it. She was good at her job and didn't particularly deserve cranky engineers prone to forgetting the world outside their workroom.

 

He smoothed her ruffled feathers through the simple power of politeness and good intentions. He apologized and made it clear she was free to appeal any disagreements to him. He offered gracefully to address any obstacles to the execution of her duties and guided her to complain about supply and deliveries. And he promised to make sure to request every possible file that had to do with Eadu's cargo situation.

 

For good measure, he offered to requisition her several backups for the power supplies that had her worried. There was a nearby station that should have ample supplies and, after all, they had a pilot on the base who could be diverted onto the short trip without significantly damaging anyone's plans.

 

He debated over his afternoon's work whether he should try to speak to the pilot again before he was sent out. Was there any way he could do it without raising someone's suspicions? Once again he cursed himself for building a character who seemed deeply unlikely to ever have something resembling a friend, or even an interest in acquiring one. Once again he debated whether he could convincingly pass off his interest as prurient if anyone asked. Old men feeling their mortality and limitations made foolish choices. Not one of the researchers or support staff knew him well. Wasn't he entitled to a whim or two after his years of hard work?

 

Orson gave him an excuse not to think about it too much. He almost certainly wouldn't believe the fiction. And if he did, if Galen was a better actor than history suggested or Krennic was less perceptive than he believed, Rook would be under constant scrutiny and never far from a death trooper prepared to shoot.

 

That and it was absolutely evil to even contemplate going through the motions of taking advantage of an entirely too young subordinate. But Galen was damned already. His own soul sold long ago. What was one more grievous wrong? If no other chance presented itself, he'd have to do it.

 

His contemplation was interrupted by a cold, heavy drop of water that managed to slip straight down the back of his neck. Eadu had its own way of providing distractions. He pulled himself from hypotheticals to the concrete (pausing on the way to spray an unreliable sealant over the newest leak). He brought his attention to the security data he made a point of monitoring himself. He suspected Orson had some control over what he could see, but he had a completely legitimate claim to the information and had often extracted useful observations. In this case, where the pilot was now.

 

Though he might have been able to guess that the answer might be “with his ship.” It was a neat little lambda-class, not one of the brutishly inelegant zeta shuttles that made heavier deliveries. A quick inspection of the design and a few comments in the station's files told him it would be a better design for managing delicate cargo in the dangerous wind and rain, and that it would be damned hard to fly solo. Fodder for small talk that might not scare Rook away from him so quickly.

 

He wished he knew ships better. They weren't hard to figure out with his background, but it would take him hours to learn the gist of what pilots and mechanics already knew intimately. An old man trying to sound like an expert in a subject he knew nothing real about had been the sad sort of funny when Galen was that age and he suspected nothing had changed.

 

Why did it bother him, how old he must look to Rook? How old he felt in years and body, not just spirit?

 

He could always just _ask_ about the ship. Who didn't like to talk about themselves and their profession? Sometimes he thought it'd actually be the death of some of his engineers not to be able to brag publicly. Small talk was not a task to worry over.

 

Small talk was always a challenge to Bodhi. He just admitted it more freely. But today he'd been granted a wealth of actual topics. He never minded talking to people when there was something to talk _about_. The on-site mechanic was (or had been, until the oddness this morning) his only ally on a base where everyone else was too important, too busy, or too military to notice he existed. He was willing and able to help with her usual routine checks, and she was always bored with the facility full of people who handled all but the messiest and dullest technical challenges themselves.

 

She did have to give him some direction. He picked up what he could, but pilot training only covered simple repairs. He handed her the wrench she needed and put his shoulder into steadying the panel without pausing in his story. “Really. A fuel pump. In a speeder that size.”

 

Athan snorted. “He's lucky he didn't blow the engine out.”

 

“He's lucky he didn't, um, you know, actually die.” He relaxed gratefully once she had the new bolt in. Even on his little ship, hull panels were a constant and heavy source of stress. “It's kid stuff. I was in the same class and I don't know how he ever made pilot.”

 

She snorted again. And clearly meant for him to notice. “You all do it, laserbrain. I was on the same base as an academy for years. The stories aren't any less stupid. You just crash less.”

 

“Well, okay.” He'd done some dumb things. Just not mechanically dumb. Since he'd just admitted she was right, it seemed unfair that she laughed at him _again_. “What?”

 

“I should have said _they_ all do it.”

 

He scowled indignantly. “I take risks.”

 

“You fly like my grandmother.”

 

“I do not!”

 

“Relax, flyboy. You're very reckless. Danger is your constant companion. You're just so good you always bring your ship down looking like it's been flown under regulation speed all the way from Jakku.”

 

“Jedha.”

 

“I don't care. Look, Rookie, you make it hard to believe you'd do anything dangerous. That's all.” She shook out her hair and straightened, grinning at the face he made at _Rookie_. Hadn't even been funny when he was one. “Not a lot of evidence you wing supenovas for fun on your way over.”

 

“Now that you know I have to kill you.” He was still a little indignant. He'd taken just as many ill advised dares and potentially career ending risks to impress his friends as... Well, maybe the bottom third or so of the academy.

 

“Speaking as your mechanic, keep it up. Your cowardice is adorable. But this has to be the most boring secret base in Imperial space. Do something stupid for a change.”

 

He thought about his gambling habits and smiled. Of course he'd never bring those anywhere he had a job to do, and he wasn't so set on impressing Athan that he'd even obliquely refer to it. “Tell you what, you can borrow the shuttle and I'll say it was me.”

 

“Have you seen me flying? You won't get it back in one--” Her banter was cut off by the trundling arrival of a droid carrying orders. She grabbed the packet without acknowledging the greeting—Bodhi's binary was really only good enough to get the gist, but it seemed rude nonetheless. “Huh. Can you run your own engine diagnostics while I finish hull integrity? Timetable's moved up.”

 

“You have another job?” He hopped into the cockpit as she asked.

 

“Actually, looks like you do.” Her gloved hand thrust a handful of papers around the hatch at him.

 

He read through quickly, putting the engine through its paces automatically. “This is barely worth the hyperdrive. I'll be in and out.”

 

“Are you complaining?” She punctuated the question with a solid bang that he hoped meant something good. He wasn't as in love with his ship as a lot of pilots. He couldn't be, they changed his assignments out so readily. There was no romance and patriotism in the intersystem mail delivery. He loved flying, but he had to settle for just being fond of the ride itself. But he did like to know he wasn't going to die midlane.

 

“No. It... It's a strange assignment, that's all.”

 

“Well, director signed off on it. Might be one of those top secret things they don't tell us peons about.”

 

Bodhi looked a little reluctantly. She was right. The orders had come from Galen Erso's desk. Could be a coincidence, of course. Maybe his name was on everything and Bodhi had never noticed. Maybe this run was, as Athan thought, something to do with the base's operations, and he was just the most convenient tool. But after this morning's odd encounter... “You know anything about him?”

 

“The director? Not much. He's usually back in his office. Decent, I guess. Not a kriffing power tripper. Says thanks if you do your job. That's a little weird.”

 

“But... but that's all? Thanks?” He began to tap his fingers together to the rhythm of a jatz number he'd heard in the cantina on his last stopover.

 

He stopped when one of Athan's high buns and half her goggles appeared around the open hatch. It was a lot of attention for her to give something that wasn't mechanical. One reason Bodhi found her so easy to deal with—there was never much eye contact to navigate. “What's under your helmet, Rookie?”

 

“Prob-probably nothing. He talked to me for a while today. That's it.”

 

“But you're worried.”

 

“I... it's never a good idea. Getting noticed.” He had no trouble chatting about engine trouble and piloting shenanigans, but elucidating something unfamiliar and alarming made words harder to find. “Nobody. Um, I mean. Nobody who gets noticed by someone like that...”

 

“Comes out of it intact?” He nodded and she scowled. They both knew it. “What're you thinking, this assignment might be a test?”

 

“If it is, I... I don't know. What he's testing for, I mean.” Or the smart thing to do would be failing on purpose. But not too badly. “I'm—I'm _just_ a pilot. Cargo only. I don't think—You don't think I'd be useful for anything else? Do you?”

 

“There's a lot of covert action on this base, but they've got it covered. Lots of big Imperial names come through. And a lot of perfectly nondescript ones.” She shook her head, going back to work on the outside. “Guess if you had an intelligence background, I wouldn't know.”

 

“I don't!” It came out more harshly than he wanted.

 

Her tone gentled a bit, though she didn't stop teasing him. “That's what you'd say if you did. Check your coolant, would you?”

 

She could probably have done it more easily. He appreciated the distraction. They were quiet for a moment as he clambered out and topped off the tank.

 

But she was just softening him up, apparently. “There's the other obvious possibility.”

 

“Oh, come _on_.” That was just unreasonable.

 

“You're kinda cute, Rookie, and who else is around?”

 

Well... “You.”

 

“Maybe he doesn't like girls.”

 

“He had a wife.”

 

She looked at him straight on for the second time that day. No more teasing. She was concerned. “It's probably not... I mean, he's old enough to be your father.”

 

“I think he's got ten years on either of my parents...”

 

“Really?”

 

“They got married young. My mother's forty-four, Abbu would have been forty-three this year...”

 

“Even creepier. My point is, probably not, but better you're ready for it, right?”

 

“How does anyone get ready for... for that?” He knew she wouldn't have anything for him. She was a friend in that she'd talk shop and gossip about safe topics while he was here, but he couldn't expect her to throw herself into potential danger for him, or even get too invested in how he felt about that danger. She was certainly quieter as they finished basic maintenance.

 

When he lifted off, he was sure the figure he spotted near the landing pad was Galen Erso.

 


	4. Chapter 4

The files arrived fairly quickly, soothing the aggravation that came of not catching Rook again on the way out. Transmissions from Eadu got priority attention, though if he'd requested anything other than purely innocuous information it wouldn't have gotten results. Secret weapon designs were all well and good, but Orson didn't have nearly the clout he believed he did and the Outer Rim was no one's priority. He was going out on a limb sending Rook out for batteries, but he was sure he could explain that away. And he'd won himself a copy of what he needed.

Not that it seemed promising at first. No records at all before recruitment to the Imperial pilot program, and why would there be? Assignment to a backwater training facility, the slow fade of a good student to a mediocre one as the training became less theoretical and more stressful. Performance scores too low to even be considered for a Tie Fighter despite high marks on technical tests. An uneventful career shunting boxes from place to place on routes unpredictable enough to warrant an organic pilot. 

A few years older than Jyn after all. Not enough to make a difference.

He found nothing he could use and almost abandoned the document. He only looked under the appended disciplinary record because it seemed mildly amusing that it existed at all, and the first item more or less confirmed that impression. Speeding. Which on plenty of worlds meant operating a vehicle while young. He had never been interested in flying, but he couldn't imagine anyone who was wanting to do it carefully and properly every moment. 

The second entry, though, was more interesting. Gambling. Rook didn't seem the type, but Galen wasn't honestly sure what type that would be. Was it a lapse in judgment, a competitive streak, a clever way to supplement a pilot's meager income bolstered by a mathematical bent of mind? A single mistake or one lapse in an otherwise invisible second career? Betting on races, unfortunately, wasn't really blackmail material. Even the strictest Imperial functionaries wouldn't punish it too severely. If he could uncover proof of considerable debts or a pattern of corruption...

Then he would threaten to expose the first person in decades to care that Lyra was dead because she was a person, because her work and her principles and her stubborn smile were lost forever, and not because it might impact the director's work or because she couldn't be a threat anymore, just an example.

He could try simply lying. Telling the pilot his delivery was to an embedded Imperial spy or simply an innocuous exchange with an eccentric fellow researcher. The trouble was setting up a drop point or a contact without involving the pilot in the first place.

One of the troubles. The other big one was that Bodhi was clearly not stupid.

A bit naive, though, some might say. He'd been on the dingy little spaceport two hours, been yelled at by three separate people for a requisition he couldn't do anything about. He'd dealt with the loopy exhaustion of too many jumps and all his worries about Galen all the while. Surely he'd done enough penance for whatever wrong was delivering this karmic bite? 

He really needed a quiet drink. He'd been to this port before and decided to go a little further than the bar next to the landing pad, figuring he knew the lay of the land. The metal and ceramic walkways, anyway. There were some good little shops where you could pick up borderline-pirated holovids, and he'd stop there on the way back. He deserved a little treat after the day he'd had. But first, that drink. Maybe two. No more. He'd be flying again by morning.

The drink was cheap and the room was quiet and he really was beginning to feel a little more at peace when a hand settled firmly on his shoulder. He jumped hard enough to rattle his table, spine going rigid, eyes widening. He'd have done as much if a friend had touched him unexpectedly. He made himself turn his head slowly. Not a friend.

He didn't recognize the man specifically. Medium height, medium build, middle age, an aggressive average that would have made him hard to describe. “Rook?” Even the stranger's voice was even and soft. Bodhi glanced around the bar, determined no one was even looking their way, and nodded jerkily. “Alomtoma wants to see you?”

Not good news, exactly, but news that made sense. “Why?” He would never have described himself as being on her good side. He didn't think anyone was, and a lot of his tricks didn't work on her very well. But he did try not to be on her bad side, and he hadn't been back here in months, not since he'd landed the Eadu assignment. 

“You'll have to ask her.” Well, he couldn't argue with that. Bodhi stood and followed the man out of the bar, down a circuitous, hard to follow route designed to confuse and frustrate. Bodhi had an excellent sense of direction, but he was confused and frustrated enough already. He might know how to find his way back, but would he have to time if he were in real trouble? And how much damn, slippery garbage would be in his way? This was an Empire-controlled base, but it was on the Outer Rim and plenty of little things could slip right by. Like the nice, legal establishment where, purely by coincidence, individual customers were often seized by the urge to bet large sums of money and where the staff always had helpful suggestions as to what kind of return one might expect on such a bet.

Bodhi usually kept his gambling confined to other pilots. It was safer, gave him a good way to manage credits won and, slightly more rarely, lost, and made for the plausible deniability of just a friendly little wager, nothing to be concerned about. But sometimes he had a sure thing worth cashing out on big, or really needed the money. Cargo pilots weren't really paid enough to help offset an emergency at home or even a few slow weeks and the pay cut that came with idling, as if he chose to sit on his license doing nothing. Little places like Alomtoma's were exactly the way to do it.

And yes, he'd lost last time. He saw patterns, made calculations, was always one step ahead, but sometimes his reach exceeded his grasp. And sometimes the damn odupiendo lost its footing and yet no one called it track tampering, no matter how dry the day. He'd hand-washed his flight suits and cut rations for a month and only his last payday had put him to rights. 

Which made it very odd that he was being dragged down here and through the restaurant, where several races were up on screens and discrete fliers sat on each table, poured over by everyone from some obvious career players even Bodhi didn't bet against to a tourist couple who'd sure be eaten alive.

They didn't slow down. His escort hadn't said a word all the while, and he didn't say a word as he ushered Bodhi into a back room. 

It was clearly a private office, the furniture larger and more solid than the uncomfortable chairs outside that looked nice and made people slightly edgy trying to find a good position. The air was a little smoky, hopefully with incense. He didn't have much of a head for anything else, and the spicy smell already tickled a bit. There were no windows, which were meaningless on a space station, and few lights, which were not. 

“Hello, Kitten.” The voice was low and sweet and perfectly unaccented. He turned to find Alomtoma at a desk, intently eyeing a screen and not paying him much mind. He'd been sweated before, and he tried to just stand his ground. It might have worked. The twi'lek did turn and look at him a minute later.

It bothered him how much she bothered him. He'd grown up on Jedha. He hadn't always been like this. There was nothing special about humans. But the empire made sure that was hard to remember. 

“I must admit I'm disappointed in you, darling. You've never really displeased me before.”

“You—you've threatened to cut my thumbs off twice.”

“If I'd meant it you wouldn't have thumbs anymore, dear. You always paid me before you left the station.” The blue of her skin was very pretty in the faint, smoky light. She was very pretty. But that wasn't the important part, and given what he knew about why she was here and not safely home in Rylothian space, he didn't think she'd want to know he was thinking it. “What happened to my good little pilot?”

“What... wait, what do you mean what happened?” He hadn't done anything to deserve this. And knowing he was being sweated didn't keep it from working.

“You're almost painfully reliable, always have been. It's why I never stopped you card counting. It made it easy to keep an eye on the rest of the table, and you were reasonable about taking your share. Which is why I'm so confused now.”

“Please tell me?”

“You left this station fifteen hundred credits in the hole, Kitten. Don't tell me they pay cargo pilots well enough that you didn't notice.”

Finally, something to fasten onto. He didn't know how to tell a ruthless not-quite-gangster she had a bookkeeping error diplomatically, but he had a goal. “That... That isn't true. I paid. It was... Mena was at the counter.” He tried to remember if he'd seen the cashier on the way in. Maybe he'd have someone to vouch for him. 

She looked at Bodhi's escort, not at him. The man coughed meaningfully and clarified. “Had a little accident with the airlock a few weeks back.”

“Ah, that one.” She was clearly watching for Bodhi's reaction, but he was too horrified to guess what she was seeing. Had they really just confessed to a murder in front of him? That was what it meant when people said accident in that tone. He was pretty sure. Did that make him a witness, too? How bad a person did it make him to worry about his own skin when a man was dead? “How did you pay him, Kitten?”

His voice shook, but he managed to answer after swallowing a few times. “Pay voucher.”

“So it could have been redeemed anywhere on the station, and he knew you were about to leave? Poor planning. I'd have expected better.”

As the first wave of sick terror began to ebb, he pieced it together. “Mena was skimming?”

“And not very artfully. It would have taken longer to catch him if he'd taken a little off the top of every big payout. He's taken care of, sweetest. Now, what to do with you?”

Why was there anything to do with him? “But... It isn't my fault. I paid. We just established that.” He was a little indignant under all the terror. If you couldn't go to grasping underworld lowlifes for fairness, where could you go? 

“Not really.” He couldn't exactly argue with that. His heart sank. “But I believe you. I do.” And rose again. “You don't have the spine to lie to me. But I still need my money, Kitten.” And there it went. “You can see your own lapse in judgment, I'm sure. Take him out back, would you, dears?” To her lackey again, and suddenly there were two more bulky figures beside him, another human and a falleen. He instinctively tried to twist away from the hands that settled on his shoulders. He might as well have tried to take on the walls. 

“Don't kill me!” Some small, distant voice inside his head wanted to laugh. He always thought that was a dumb line when it come up in holovids. 

Alomtoma laughed for him. “I'm not the government, dear. I can't afford to be be frivolous about murder. And it's not like it's personal. Think of yourself as an example if it makes you feel better. Just smash the one hand, would you? And don't take too long about it.” 

She said something else, but he didn't catch it around the white noises roaring in his ears. The world took on every aspect of the shadow puppet plays he'd watched in the marketplace as a child, all light and movement that refused to resolve itself into reality. He was hyperaware of the heavy hands that nudged him along, a puppet himself—His skin crawled at every point of contact. Everything felt too tight and the way his flightsuit shifted was strangely distracting, made it impossible to watch where they were shoving him. Somewhere outside, back behind the restaurant. He thought about shouting for help—chances were there was no one to hear, chances were it would be worse, what did he know about chance if he couldn't even pay off a gambling debt without it going wrong.

He felt the impact when the hammer came down, but not the pain. By then it wasn't a sensation his screaming nerves could really register, or not more urgently than the hands holding him down, the impassive voices of Alomtoma's enforcers grating in his ears.

The sudden, buzzing retort of a blaster. Four, five shots in quick succession. 

A solid, slack weight landed on him and he instinctively shoved. The world snapped back into focus all at once. His hand was in cold-burning agony, the slightest motion triggering the feeling of broken glass dragged across the inside of his skin. The weight he'd shoved had been Alomtoma's enforcer, who, like his companions, was a corpse with a smoking hole in his chest. 

“Hold fire, he's one of ours.” The electronic crackle of the trooper's observation should have been a comfort, but Bodhi's eyes were locked on the bodies. One of the troopers kicked the falleen's body out of the way unnecessarily, leaving the two humans where they'd fallen. “Identification, pilot?” Her helmet didn't conceal a certain youth in her high pitched voice.

He tried, automatically, to reach for his papers and let out an involuntary squeak. More slowly, he raised his right hand to open his pocket and hand over the papers. He couldn't really talk without wheezing and whimpering, but his forms were all in order, and the trooper commander didn't seem that interested in details. He heard her tell a few of her soldiers to search the area and allowed himself to be escorted to the command center. The head of base security was similarly uninterested in the story, just sent him to the medic for the cheapest and most inefficient treatment for his broken fingers, the lousy painkillers and medpack and brace that would keep his bones from grinding themselves into powder before they healed. 

They had him back on his ship within a few hours.

No reason for an investigation, after all. He was an imperial and a human, they were criminal scum. They were dead and out of polite society's hair. He had a function (not too important a function, or there'd have been bacta and decent drugs) and an approved place, and would go about his business. 

They were, he reminded himself as he nudged at his controls with his elbow, just about gangsters. Maybe they'd found Alomtoma. Maybe they'd closed down the whole place and shot everyone inside. He'd been too much of a coward to ask. No one inside had had the empire's insignia on their shoulder, so no one inside would have been disregarded alive instead of disregarded dead.


End file.
